


Then Perhaps She Will

by Ma_Kir



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Jedi Leia Organa, Jedi Training (Star Wars), Mentioned Han Solo, Mentioned Luke Skywalker, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21544318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ma_Kir/pseuds/Ma_Kir
Summary: Rey has one last teacher before facing her ultimate destiny. The question is, will her new teacher begin to face her own past and decisions first?
Relationships: Leia Organa & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker & Han Solo, Leia Organa & Rey, Leia Organa/Han Solo
Kudos: 15





	Then Perhaps She Will

I really wanted to avoid this. 

Yes, Flyboy. Laugh it up. I know how I never run from a fight, if I can help it. But even I know my limits.   
  
Right. I can just imagine you chortling over there, trying to cover that chuckle with some coughing. I'm even glaring at that spot, where I know rationally you can't possibly be anymore. I mean, how can you be there if you're not in that gaping hole in my chest. Ben might as well have stabbed me on Starkiller Base when he took your life, too. 

Self-fulfilling prophecies. They've gotten my family into a lot of trouble. Hells, they got this entire galaxy into almost forty years of war along with them. 

I'm looking at her right now. She's amazing. I remember when she came back from Starkiller, and she was just so sad, so scared. Rebellions make children grow up fast, faster than they ever should. We were supposed to have peace, after the last one. The struggle was supposed to be over. But nothing ever ends. And I guess no one, as you said Luke, is ever truly gone. 

I should be so angry at you, old Jedi axioms aside. You ignited your lightsaber on him in his sleep. In. His. Sleep. 

I know ... I know you panicked. The thought of someone from our family, with Skywalker blood, plunging the galaxy back into pain and suffering after everything ... our father did ... But he was my son. He _is_ my son. Underneath all of that darkness and horror, you should have still remembered that scared little boy. My boy. I left him with you to train, to protect. I trusted you. I trusted you ...

Because I didn't trust myself.

We really are twins, Luke. I should have remembered that. We should have kept talking. We needed to keep in contact. 

And I should never have left you to do it all alone.

Everyone forgot, just as it's easy to do even now with this young lady, that a sentient being can only take so much: no matter how talented, how skilled, or brilliant, or dedicated they are. Yes. I guess we all have that in common. 

She finally mastered that saber throw. Between that, and the fancy acrobatic exercises, I wonder how many times I kept missing my mark, back in the day. Still not as much as you did, in your first years, genius -- I still remember you from way back when -- but we both knew that I was more comfortable in the life I chose for myself. To my obligations. To my duties. Really, I'm better with the meditation and the focus. My father had the best tutors for that. It was easy to apply it towards mindfulness, to being in the moment, to controlling your thoughts into a singular focus. I guess it was just their way to make sure the Inquisitorius ... and our father didn't find me first. 

The Inquisitorius. The Knights of Ren. The Dark Lords of the Sith. Different names for the same ossik. I don't think I ever swore this much until I met Han, but it's one of his bad habits that actually helps to relieve some of the stress of this. They know about the others, the ones who are awakening. I can't do much about that right now. I know it's eating Rey up inside, to think that the Knights ... to think that Ben could be going after other Force-sensitives, other _children_ ... 

Rey's kind of like you. Or maybe like Anakin Skywalker, from what you told me from the records, in that meditation's harder for her. It was my solitude. I think it helps when it's us together. We really didn't have a lot of time after Starkiller Base, but there were more missions after Crait. I didn't need you to tell me, to suggest ... I mean, I saw her with those Jedi texts. She really pulled a fast one on you, didn't she? Han would be laughing at you if he knew, telling you you should have seen that one coming a mile away. At least ... I hope he is, wherever he is now, in the Force. 

There is only so much you can absorb from book-learning. Hands-on experience, and a teacher you can interact -- a guide -- are the best tools for the job. You and I, Luke, we were both fortunate and not, whatever the Jedi said about luck. You had a few ghosts to point you in the right direction, but the discipline of the Rebellion's military and solidarity to hone you. I had less, but also more in martial arts training, tactics, sharpshooting, hiding in plain sight, masking my intentions ... No, I'm not bragging. I had to learn all that stuff early as a Senator's daughter, a Senator, and leader in a Rebellion that could have, and should have gotten me killed many times over. 

But I couldn't leave her with some old books and a bunch of ghosts. No offense.

I saw what that did to you. I mean, you're helpful, when you can be. I mean, I wish you hadn't died. You idiot. You being here, in the flesh, could have made the difference. You know, the only thing that makes me as mad as what you almost did with Ben is the fact that you didn't train that young lady when you were still on the material plane with the rest of us. That earnestness, that steadfastness, that need to save others despite the risk to herself ... that's all you, but smarter and prettier. All right, now I'm pretty sure it wasn't just Han's dice you channeled from the Force that day. 

She's advancing so fast. From what I understand, during her time under Ben's captivity she was able to gain the rudiments of his training, though applying it had been a combination of her staff fighting from Jakku to that old lightsaber. Talk about transferable skills. If Ben hadn't been injured, though. If he hadn't almost compromised himself with what he did to ...  
  
So far, Rey has gotten by with her canniness and her synchronicity with Ben on the Supremacy, with the focus you managed to pass onto her in the little sabbatical of yours. And that anger.   
  
Yes. I know. I know where anger's supposed to lead. I think that's where we have so much in common, but we're so different. 

But with me ... I know what the Jedi say, but it's like asking what came first: the dragon or the dragon's egg. 

Of course I'm still snarky, especially at my age. I've earned it, you two. Especially after putting up with your nonsense. With all this nonsense. Rey's anger is intuitive. It comes from a place of righteousness, of warmth. It's a fierce thing, and I admit it makes me uncomfortable because ...  
  
Yes. Yes. It reminds me of ... me. I can already hear another "Your Worshipfulness" crack coming. I almost wish I could. She's afraid too. She's afraid of failing. It was different before. Before she was afraid of never belonging. Of never finding her family. Of never knowing who she was based on where she came from.   
  
I knew where I came from. Even when I didn't actually know. But then there was that night, on Endor, when you told me the truth. When you realized who we were to each other, Luke ...  
  
I thought about it, for a long time. Not the revelation that we shared blood, and we shared blood with a monster. But what that meant. The implications of the thing. I thought about that time, on the Death Star, when ... Vader held me in that grip, and Tarkin obliterated my entire planet, my life, from the face of existence. I imagined what it would have been like if I knew that we shared the same power, then. Sometimes, I would picture letting that rage inside of me become a blazing fire, a roaring dragon rising out of me, letting me crush that disgusting butcher's skull with the Force, and exterminating every single stormtrooper, officer, and worker around us in that command room, everyone complicit in the genocide of my people, of billions of innocent lives, and I would wake up in a cold sweat feeling both grateful that I didn't have that temptation ... and furious that I never knew I had that power, that potential, at all.   
  
Kark the Jedi Code. Kark the Light and the Dark Side. I would have done it. And I would have spent the rest of my life, what was left of it, trying to tell myself I did the right thing ... assuming Vader hadn't taken me then, tortured me, exploited that moment, and twisted me into something I'd wish every day I had died before becoming. If Palpatine hadn't gotten a crack at me first.   
  
That's why I took so long to ... learn. I believed anger could be used as a legitimate force, an impetus of change, a dynamo to inspire Rebellion against tyranny. And then I saw all those holos of Anakin Skywalker, and the holocrons you found, and Ahsoka and Rex's recollections of him ... 

It made me want to avoid the Force even more. Because, I was always afraid that I was too much like him. Just how many Jedi, or Force-sensitives started out with good intentions, and let that power consume them, making them into something they weren't before? You trusted my sense of integrity more than I did. The fact that I didn't want that power, you told me, was the very reason I should have trained to understand it. You were good, baby brother. You used my own political statements against me.   
  
I guess we learned from each other.   
  
Sometimes, I feel we learned some of the wrong things too.   
  
I didn't trust myself training Ben. I wasn't as experienced as you. That is what I kept telling myself. I showed him the basics. But it didn't deal with his anger, or especially his fear. I was his mother, Luke. I should have made it so that he could come to me about anything, confide to me about everything. And I was afraid. I was afraid that I was raising him to potentially be like his biological grandfather, that I would fail him that way ...   
  
Bloody politics. I really thought I was making a difference in that arena. I really thought I did the right thing in not telling Ben about our father. One day, I kept telling myself. One day we would both, together, tell him the truth. But that snake, Snoke, he exploited all of that, just as his First Order agents discredited me. It was always later. That's what I kept saying to myself. Later, we would tell the galaxy the truth about our parentage. Later, we would get the Jedi Knights to collaborate with the New Republic. Later, I would tell Ben everything.   
  
Later. Later. Later ...

We made our choices, didn't we? I don't blame you, Han, for leaving. I could have handled it better. I know you might try to brush it off, let it all be bygones, and you did your part to screw up, but we shouldn't have sent Ben away. I shouldn't have. I'm going to have to live with that to the end of my days. 

And I asked so much of you, Luke. I should have realized it. 

We all failed Ben. We all failed each other.   
  
But I won't fail that young lady.   
  
She's hard at work now, trying to fix that lightsaber. Did you really throw it off a cliff, Luke? I'd be horrified, if it weren't so amusing on another level. I'm never going to let you live that down, even though you are technically dead. And I know you can hear me. She was very surprised when I offered to teach her. You should have ... and you probably did, see the expression on her face when I showed her _my_ lightsaber.   
  
Nope. I never carried it into the Senate rotunda, even when I really _wanted_ to. You see, the thing is, what people don't know about Jedi is that in order for a Jedi Knight to become a Jedi Master they have teach someone, to train them towards Knighthood, or the equivalent of it. It would have been easy for you, everyone else would think, right Luke? You were, technically, the last Jedi. Everyone might think you would have been considered a Master by default. Certainly, there would have been no one left to challenge you on that fact.   
  
But we know better. Those ghosts. They did not let up on you. Or us. We might not have had a Jedi Council to supervise us, but those ghostly visits definitely made some sessions interesting. I'm really glad, despite everything, that you were the one to train me. That I had a physical teacher. It would have driven me out of my mind to try to teach myself how to control those abilities on my own with just holocrons and books and scattered relics ... and Force ghosts appearing in my dreams or in the sonic shower. You trained me to know the basics. That is all a teacher can do. The rest of it was up to me.   
  
At the time, I didn't think it necessary to do the whole visit to Ilum. Aside from the fact that it reminded me too much of Hoth, I was just going to go back to politics. I wasn't ever going to need a lightsaber. I never sought one out ... even if that kyber crystal found me instead.   
  
Yes. My fellow Senators never knew they had another "Jedi" in their midst. The scandal would have compounded that revelation about our parentage. Still, the look on their face would have been priceless. I could have made them do almost anything I wanted. Even when everything went to Chaos. But I wasn't going to be that person. I wasn't going to become another Palpatine.   
  
I'm glad I learned how to make a lightsaber. It will help Rey either repair your old one ... or make one of her own. I'm doing the best I can, with what I have, whatever you and the other Jedi ghosts have to say. And yes ... I will thank you. Thank you, wise Jedi Master, for teaching me skills I never thought I'd have to use to survive that trip into the vacuum of space, from recovering and healing so quickly from that medically induced coma, from all those times and gut reactions that saved my life and the lives of others, for getting me to actually trust my feelings ...   
  
And I always had those powers. They were always a part of me. Of us. Not training them, not knowing what to do with them would, in some ways, have been even more irresponsible than misusing skills I already had. That kind of raw power could manifest at any time, especially these days as you already know. Informed choices always make for better decisions.   
  
No. Seriously, Luke. Thank you. I just wish I could have gone with you. If I'd known what an ossik-fest the New Republic would become ... maybe your Jedi Order could have done better with two Jedi leading it, two building it instead of one, with family training and guiding Ben, and maybe ...  
  
Fierfek. Maybe I would've just done what I already did. "Should haves" and "could haves" don't belong in the world of where I am, and what I am doing now.   
  
Rey will have a lightsaber again soon, one way or another. And she'll be more than just a lightsaber. More than a symbol, or a leader. I don't have any illusions about it. I've seen too many young men, women, and beings go to their deaths to believe that I have much more time myself. I know I've said that before, nerfherder, if you can hear me. I hope you can hear me, Han. And Luke. I miss you both, so much. You and Ben. I wonder when I'm going to be able to rest. But I know the saying. I'll rest when ... well.   
  
When I'm not wicked.   
  
Rey's looking at me now, perhaps the same way I looked into Artoo's holoprojector when I sent him to Obi-Wan Kenobi. I have work to do. And, I guess I just remembered what I told her.   
  
We have everything we need. 


End file.
